


Crisscross

by lillianmmalter



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Disabled Character, Child Death, Civic Corruption, Comic Book Violence, Jack's Guilt, M/M, Murder, Skinny Steve Rogers, Superheroes, Timeline What Timeline, mention of suicide, slight Identity Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 06:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10985538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillianmmalter/pseuds/lillianmmalter
Summary: Jack is a superhero who made a terrible mistake for which he can never forgive himself. Daniel lost his leg because of that mistake, but he forgave the superhero responsible a long time ago.Somehow, they manage to fall in love anyway.





	Crisscross

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alhana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alhana/gifts).



> For Alhana, who asked for so many things that I mushed a bunch of them together and came up with this beast. Hopefully there's at least something in here you'll like.
> 
> Thanks to K and B for being willing to brainstorm superhero stuff, to Ellix and [truth_renowned](http://archiveofourown.org/users/truth_renowned/works) for beta services, and to [Paeonia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Paeonia/pseuds/Paeonia) and [irisdouglasasiana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana) for being my most excellent brainstorming cheerleaders while I was writing this. I seriously couldn't have done this without help from all of you.
> 
> Please note that this is an AU where elements of the present and the past coexist. This is on purpose. I blame the Incredibles, which I watched the night before I got the prompt. Also Steve Rogers. That boy just invited himself into this world I was creating and demanded his choice of husbands. Which is ridiculous because this story isn't about him. Not even a little bit.

One of the problems with being a superhero is that everything is bigger. Fights are bigger and the consequences mean more. Betrayals cut deeper. And when things go wrong, they go very wrong indeed.

The Master, revealed earlier that day as Vernon Masters, the lying sonofabitch, was robbing a bank when Kinetos finally caught up to him.

Because that was in any way original.

Under his arm, he was carrying two ledger books bound in expensive leather. There was no money, no jewelry, just the books. He was probably planning to use the contents for blackmail, Kinetos thought, because superpowered or no, Vernon Masters wasn’t clever enough to do anything else with them.

It made Kinetos want to sneer in disgust.

“Did you really think I was gonna let you get away with this?” Kinetos called out, voice deep and stance firm as he blocked the one escape route the surrounding police had left on the street.

The Master grinned, his teeth gleaming a sickening red in the flashing emergency lights. The cool afternoon sun bounced off his bald head and reflected off his tinted goggles. All together, the effect made him look inhuman, demonic. Or maybe that was just how Kinetos felt about him in that moment.

“Oh, I think you fully intend to play the hero, to add another fight with me to your record as New York’s defender. It makes a good story after all. But you know you’re going to lose this one, Kinetos, just like you’ve lost every other time you’ve faced off against me.”

Kinetos clenched his jaw, but said nothing else.

How the hell had he missed putting the pieces together for so long? The Master loved to monologue, to taunt him like this. And how many times had he witnessed Vernon doing the same thing to his political enemies while growing up? At the time he’d been in awe of Vernon, took mental notes on how to bring an enemy to his knees with little more than a few carefully chosen words. He’d looked up to Vernon as a second father more beloved than his actual father. Vernon had gotten him his civilian job, for fuck’s sake, taken him out for his first beer as celebration for getting into Cornell. He’d grown up wanting to be Vernon, because at least Vernon actually gave a crap about him, unlike his dad.

And it was all a lie. It was all a game. Everything the man did, as Vernon and as the Master, was nothing more than careful preparation for - well, Kinetos didn’t really know what the man was working toward, but he didn’t care either. Whatever it was, it ended today.

Kinetos firmed his stance and prepared for whatever the Master was going to throw at him.

“What? No clever comeback? No brave one-liner the newspapers will print ad nauseam until the next time we face off against one another?” The Master’s grin widened cruelly. “You’re letting your fans down, boy.”

Kinetos clenched his fists. One hit, one blow straight to the asshole’s jaw was all he needed. All the energy he absorbed from commuters bumping into him twice a day, all the energy he collected letting his sparring partners beat the shit out of him in the boxing ring on the weekends, all of it could be funnelled into one knockout punch that would allow the cops to put this asshole in jail for good. And if it happened to be strong enough to kill him, well, the bastard had earned it.

Kinetos walked forward, glaring.

“You’re done, Vernon,” he said. “I know who you are now, and you’re not getting away with it. Not anymore.”

The Master’s jaw slackened. He stared for a long moment, then turned toward the police blocking off the other end of the street, took a deep breath, and opened his mouth wide as though to scream. Every cop directly in his path leaped out of the way. It would have been funny if every encounter with the Master weren’t a life or death situation.

Chuckling, the Master walked calmly through the new hole in their defenses.

Kinetos followed him.

Outside the police cordon, the Master looked back at Kinetos then broke into a run.

Kinetos ran after him.

His legs were longer than the Master’s, and he was in better shape, so Kinetos didn’t even need to draw on his energy reserves to run just that bit faster to catch him. The ease of the chase made Kinetos sick with fury at himself. Why had he let the Master beat him so many times? Why had he believed anything Vernon told him throughout his life? The man was pathetic. He kept looking back at Kinetos as he ran, his movements getting sloppier with every yard closer to him Kinetos got.

At the end of the block, Kinetos caught him. He spun the Master around and decked him in the face. The Master hit the ground with a grunt and a satisfying thud. One of the lenses on his goggles was cracked. The ledgers he was carrying flew off to the side and skidded across the street with a flutter of pages that scattered the fallen petals from the pear trees lining the sidewalks.

The bastard grinned at him.

“Oh, Kinetos, I didn’t think you had it in you,” the Master taunted.

“You don’t know me at all.”

“You have no idea what you’re meddling with, boy. Stopping me won’t stop anything. You think you know power because you can do a few little tricks? That’s nothing. There are those who rule and those meant to be ruled, and whatever little fantasies you may be entertaining under that pretty blue mask of yours, you are not one of the men who keep the world turning. You’re nothing but a fly, soon swatted out.”

Kinetos scowled and punched him again. Somehow, he couldn’t make himself use his energy reserves to strengthen the punch. It was too satisfying feeling the unforgiving crunch of the Master’s face against the knuckles of his fist.

The Master groaned, flinching away from the next hit, but doing nothing to defend himself.

High pitched shouts echoed down the street at them, and Kinetos looked up to see kids leaning out of four stories worth of windows. Some of them were waving, shouting to get his attention, while others watched with stunned faces.

Shit.

He couldn’t beat the crap out of the Master in front of a bunch of kids.

Kinetos started to draw his energies into his arm for the final knockout blow, but the Master kicked him away with surprising force, knocking him on his ass.

Kinetos blinked in surprise, but absorbed the energy of the impact. It would be useful later. It always was.

They both scrambled to their feet. The police had surrounded them again, blocking them into their small section of street. Kinetos distantly noted that some officers were entering nearby buildings to keep their occupants inside and out of the fighting. Those left outside looked nervous, all clutching their guns or batons.

Kinetos decided to give them all something extra to use against the Master, a Super’s worst nightmare.

“Vernon Masters,” Kinetos called, letting his voice echo down the block. “Of the Mayor’s Office of Operations, Capital 2-5375. Self-styled as the Master. We know who you are now. You’re finished.”

He felt sick at himself the moment it was done, but the Master couldn’t hide anymore. There was a grim satisfaction in that.

With a wild look of fury, the Master opened his mouth and let out a silent scream.

No one knew exactly how the Master’s scream worked, because no one could get close enough to measure the frequency of it without dying. All anyone knew was that it ripped things apart, destroying anything that got in its path.

And this time, for the first time, Kinetos wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way.

Kinetos nearly collapsed to the ground from the pain of it. Every molecule in his body felt like it was being ripped apart. It felt like his soul was being shredded from the agony, like his breath would never return. A pain this intense was never meant to exist.

No wonder people died from the power of the Master’s voice.

That thought brought Kinetos back to himself.

He was not going to die like this. He refused to be taken out by a self-serving creep like the Master, but more than anything he refused to die at the hands of Vernon, his one-time friend. His betrayer.

With an extreme force of will, Kinetos began to absorb the energy of the sound waves being blasted at him. His heart galloped in his chest and sweat beaded under his cowl, but Kinetos was able to absorb the energy and stand tall again.

The Master’s sound waves stopped coming and he stood gaping at Kinetos like he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Kinetos gave him a grim smile.

Mimicking what he’d seen the Master do countless times, Kinetos opened his mouth and screamed a silent scream right at the Master’s face.

Power unlike any other he’d absorbed before coursed through him. The Master crumpled without a further fight. Kinetos stopped screaming immediately, panting from the energy drain that resulted just from the few seconds he used it.

It was done. He’d done it. Kinetos finally beat the Master.

Suddenly there was the clatter and crash of bricks falling, the rumble of concrete giving way. Screams came from the school building in front of him, quickly drowned out by the snapping roar of the building falling in on itself. Kinetos turned away and protected his face, instinctively absorbing the force of the air rushing around him.

It was over in seconds.

Kinetos coughed on the dust floating around him, waiting for it to settle enough for him to see again. When it finally did, he looked around, stunned. The entire school building had collapsed, the cries and shouts of the children inside horribly silenced.

No.

He hadn’t miscalculated that badly, he couldn’t have. He’d been aiming for the Master, not the school...

The Master was lying to the side of the rubble, unconscious and untouched by the chunks of masonry spilling out across the street. Police officers were already approaching with handcuffs and a medieval looking mask to take the Master into custody, but Kinetos couldn’t look away from the damage he had done.

All those kids. Their teachers. And hadn’t he seen a couple of cops entering the building to keep everyone inside and out of harm’s way?

Kinetos almost choked on the bile rising in his throat.

What had he done? Oh, fuck, what had he done?

A moment later he realized he was moving, stumbling unconsciously toward the mess he made. And then he was picking up bricks and chunks of masonry and tossing them aside, not paying attention to the state of his energy reserves, not paying attention to anything but the dim hope that he hadn’t fucked up as badly as it seemed, that people were still alive in there.

People had to still be alive in there, right?

The first body he found belonged to a little girl, her once dark pigtails matted with scarlet blood and sticky grey dust, her once cute dress torn and ruined. She was wearing only one patent leather shoe when he pulled out her corpse.

The next seven bodies were much the same, some boys, some girls, one of them a teacher.

The next body he pulled out was alive, a policeman barely clinging to consciousness, his lower body crushed by the weight of an entire wall. Kinetos pushed it off him, his muscles screaming at him, his energy reserves weakening in protest, but this one was alive, dammit. This one was alive.

He carefully cradled the man in his arms while he carried him to safety, then handed him off to one of the paramedics now surrounding the building and dove back into the rubble, relentlessly clawing his way through it to reach more people.

There had to be more people alive in there, there had to be.

It started to rain at some point after the police searchlights came on, and then to sleet, the moisture turning the dust into a muddy slurry that made the rubble more difficult to move, but the air easier to breathe.

Kinetos didn’t break in his rescue efforts.

The sleet stopped and more people came to help. Kinetos hardly noticed.

Kinetos worked with the rescue teams combing over the ruined school building until the early morning light of the next day started creeping between the buildings around them, pulling out dead bodies, ruined bodies, miraculously alive bodies.

When everyone who was in the building was accounted for, one way or another, Kinetos limped away, head down, and disappeared into the city. No one saw him for months after that, and when they did, he was no longer the hero they remembered. He was cautious and wary and vengeful to anyone who threatened his city. And it was clear to everyone that he never forgave himself for the collapse of the Strategic Scientific School.

 

***

 

Daniel closed his inbox and levered himself out of his chair, the computerized knee of his new Stark Industries prosthetic predicting his movements flawlessly. He’d been nervous trying such an experimental design, especially as the computers he was used to were massive blocky things, the more powerful ones still taking up an entire room. But his new knee worked great, almost as well as his original one, at least as far as keeping him upright without crutches or a cane was concerned. And it didn’t make the horrible clacking noise his first prosthetic made when he walked with it. There was only so much he could do to muffle the noise with glue and cotton swabbing before the damn thing lost half its functionality, so the discovery that he wouldn’t need to do that with this one was half the reason he agreed to try it out in the first place.

The success he had with his new prosthetic was almost enough to make him regret leaving the police force after his injury, but the truth was he liked his new job, and he definitely liked his new coworkers better than anyone he left behind at the station. It was nice he could still feel like he was making a difference while surrounded by people he considered friends, people whose opinions he valued and respected. People like his editor-in-chief, Peggy Carter.

Daniel poked his head through Peggy’s open office door. She was scowling at some papers on her desk and playing with her wedding ring, an unconscious tick of hers since she got married that always made him smile.

“You wanted to see me?” he said. She looked up, her expression smoothing, and beckoned him in, motioning for him to close the door behind him.

“I want you to do a story, but I don’t think you’ll like it,” Peggy said once he sat down.

Daniel raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Okay. What’s the story?”

“Kinetos. Whatever background you can find on him and an analysis of what he’s up to now. We know he’s still around, but sightings of him are rare and he doesn’t sign autographs anymore. I want to know why.”

Daniel’s gut clenched and a jolt of phantom pain coursed briefly though the part his leg that wasn’t there anymore.

“You know why,” he said evenly.

“We suspect we know why, but suspicion doesn’t equal truth. I want facts.”

Daniel held her gaze then swallowed and looked away. “I won’t do it.”

“Daniel-”

“I won’t, and you can stop looking at me like that.”

“I’m not-”

“Look, the guy saved my life; everybody who knows me knows it. And I’m grateful to him, I am. But it seems pretty clear to me that the Strategic Scientific School collapse was at least as bad a day for him as it was for me, and I’m not going to take part in some hand-wringing second anniversary article that’ll pull on people’s heartstrings. I won’t do it.”

“That’s not why I want the article, and it’s not why I want you to write it.”

Daniel clenched his teeth. “Then why?”

She considered him, then said, “There are rumors of a Super registration law going around.”

“There are always rumors of a Super registration law. It’ll never pass because it’s too expensive to implement and there’s no way to enforce it.”

“Mayor Chadwick is preparing to push one forward anyway, possibly in as soon as a month. And rumor has it, this time he has the votes to make it pass.”

Daniel stared at her, trying to puzzle out what she wasn’t telling him. “What makes you think any story I write about Kinetos will turn public favor against the bill strongly enough to kill it?”

She looked at him with a kind smile. “Because even though you lost your leg due to his actions you still admire him. You know what it is to serve the public, what choices someone in that position must face, what the consequences are when such a person screws up. And of all my reporters, you’re the least likely to let your own feelings cloud your judgement when it comes to telling the truth.”

Daniel closed his eyes and sighed. He didn’t know how she did it, but Peggy Carter was the only woman he knew who could get him to do anything she wanted, however ill-advised.

“I don’t know how you expect me to find anything. He’s practically turned into a ghost.”

“You’re smart and resourceful. I’m sure you’ll come up with something. Besides, I’m not looking for an interview, I’m looking for a balanced, well-researched article that will make the citizens of New York consider how they want their city to function. I’m perfectly content for you to include other superheroes in it as well if you need to, but Kinetos will, necessarily, have to be the lead-in and main focus because of his history in this city.”

Daniel looked at her, wishing he could think of a way to say no to her.

“You can’t ask Rogers to do it? I mean, if the point is to bring attention to the latest incarnation of the Super registration law-”

“He’s working on different angle. I need you on this one.” She got up and walked around her desk to sit in the chair next to him. “Daniel, I can’t trust this to anyone else on the staff. I know it’s a delicate subject with you, but this law cannot pass. Chadwick and his boys are up to something and I’m afraid of what a win for them on this would mean. I need subtlety and a cool head. You know neither of those things are Steve’s forte, especially not on issues he’s passionate about.”

Daniel snorted. “I’m impressed he managed to contain himself enough to bring you this information without writing about it first.”

“I never said he’s the one who brought it to me.” Daniel gave her a wry look and she smiled. “I told you you were smart. You’ll do it?”

He hesitated.

“You can put as many crime statistics as you like in so long as they’re actually relevant.”

Of course she’d go for one of his weak points. He should have expected it; she knew him too well.

“Fine,” he agreed. “But I’m going to need at least a couple of weeks.”

“You have until two days before the vote.”

“Whenever that happens to be?”

“Whenever that happens to be.”

He nodded and stood and was nearly out the door when she called his name.

“Yes?”

“Try not to completely bury yourself in research this time. It’s important, but it’s not that important. I expect you to leave the office on weekends at least.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Daniel said with a wry smile and returned to his desk.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had the sweetest crush on our dear editor-in-chief there,” Rose said, sidling up behind him once he sat down. “You’re always smiling at her.”

Daniel sighed. His supposed crush on Peggy was a favorite topic of Rose’s.

“She’s a married woman. Woman being one of the key parts of that sentence, oh Copy Editor Supreme.”

Rose just smiled at him. “Bisexuality is a thing.”

“For people like Peggy, sure. For people like me-”

“Who are afraid of pussy.”

“Rose!”

She cackled, giving way to full-throated laughter as he blushed. Daniel glanced around the newsroom as surreptitiously as possible in the hopes no one was paying attention to them. Dottie Underwood looked up from her computer and gave him one of her unnerving smiles, her fingers still flying fast over her keyboard all the while.

Daniel looked away, hoping his blush wasn’t as bad as he feared. The last thing he needed was Underwood starting in on him too.

“You know,” he said to Rose, keeping his voice low, “for someone who claims to be asexual, you sure are interested in the sex lives of everyone else around you.”

She shrugged, her grin not dimming one bit. “I can find sex fascinating and still not want to have it.”

“Why don’t you go bother someone who’s actually having it, then?”

“Oh, don’t be like that, you’re a very attractive guy, Daniel. We can find you a boyfriend.”

He snorted.

“Or a one night stand. No judgments.”

“Was there something you actually needed?”

She set down a printed copy of his latest article on a suspicious string of supposed suicides; it was already scattered with red marks half an hour after he submitted it to her.

He sighed. At least his work never came back dripping in as much red ink as Barton’s.

“I’ll get right on that.”

She smiled cheerfully and left, and Daniel went back to work.

 

***

 

Jack closed the newspaper and laid it on his desk with a thoughtful hum. He was always nervous to read articles about himself - about Kinetos, rather - but this one came from Shield News at a very delicate time for the Chadwick administration.

Shield News was widely respected and well-known to break leading stories of the day in a thoughtful manner even editors of the Times sometimes envied. It was required reading around City Hall, despite everyone’s vocal assertions it only printed queer stories for pansies and degenerates. But facts were facts, and Shield’s politics guy had a knack for bringing people around to his side of whatever story he wrote. It didn’t hurt that the occasional cartoons he sometimes produced were often spot-on satires of issues many in the city government would rather have kept hidden.

While most people he knew read the paper to keep tabs on Steve Rogers’s latest crusades, Jack liked reading Shield News for their crime reporting. Shield’s crime guy knew his stuff; he clearly had ties to the NYPD, and his sympathetic, even-handed writing style often shined a light on problems only those fighting for justice had any clue about. Jack frequently used the man’s insights to inform his own work as Kinetos.

And now Daniel Sousa had just written a piece on Kinetos himself.

Chadwick was frothing that the article was clearly the latest part of a calculated attack against the Super registration law he wanted passed. There was talk of delaying the vote further so Shield News’s latest set of articles about the law would be farther out of the public’s mind. There were even whispers among some of the junior staff that the vote might get delayed indefinitely.

Jack secretly hoped so. Even with everything he’d done behind the scenes to subtly derail it, it was far too close to being passed for him to feel at all comfortable about it.

There were reasons Supers tended to keep their civilian identities secret, and despite what his colleagues thought, most of them weren’t nefarious in nature. They had families and friends to protect, jobs to hold down, neighbors who didn’t deserve to be used as pawns in some twisted power game.

And the Super registration law was nothing if not a power game.

Jack still wasn’t sure what the ultimate goal behind the law was - he was too far outside the mayor’s inner circle to even begin to speculate on that - but he knew it couldn’t be good. No one whose wife used to date a mob boss like Joseph Manfredi - and still did if some of the office rumors were to be believed - was operating solely out of the goodness of his heart. Besides, some of Chadwick’s business ties were… worryingly convenient for such an upstart young politician. The longer Jack worked for him, the less he wanted to, and the less his better nature let him entertain the idea of quitting. He had a bad feeling Kinetos would be needed someday to mop up after Chadwick and his friends and that feeling had only gotten worse after he discovered who Vernon really was.

The armrests of his chair creaked and Jack realized he was using some of his energy reserves to grip them harder than normal. He let go and glanced at the paper again. Another headline caught his eye.

**TWO YEARS ON, NO ANSWERS FOR SURVIVORS OF FINOW STREET FIRE  
Johann Fennhoff continues inquiries into deaths of wife, brother**

Great. Just what he needed. Yet another reminder of how useless he was at protecting the people of his city. Maybe if he’d been helping out at the fire that day he wouldn’t have fucked up and killed so many kids. And maybe someone would have found out how the tenement building burned so quickly if the story of this fire hadn’t been buried under weeks of reporting about the school collapse. But if Kinetos hadn’t been there to stop the Master, then Vernon would have gotten away with those ledgers, and reports had come out in the months after the Master’s arrest that he’d been paving the way for a major attack on the city, blackmailing prominent business leaders into doing his bidding lest they become direct targets of the attack.

Everywhere he looked, Vernon’s fingerprints appeared, dirtying the hard work of honest people across the city. He was almost worse than the Maggia. At least they were honest about being crooks.

Jack sighed and moved the paper off his desk, pulling a report on a proposed housing project in Hell’s Kitchen in front of him instead. It looked set to rival Stuy Town in size if the permissions went through. An estimated 13,000 people displaced to make way for ugly buildings none of the displaced could afford to live in when they were done. The developers stood to make millions, but Jack wondered if it would do anything to actually improve the city. Sure, the slums needed to be cleaned up, but was this really the way to do it?

Chadwick seemed to be in favor of it. Jack wondered what the man had to gain from the deal. Surely he wasn’t dumb enough to leave traces of his connections around, but if there was something, if something about him could be dug up it could be enough to get him recalled, get him out of power.

And then Jack would be out of a job and out of any means to support his superhero work.

He dragged a hand down his face.

There was a knock on his office door.

“Hey, Thompson, do you have those numbers on the last registration poll?” Yauch asked, poking his head inside.

“The Supers one? It was 53% for,” Jack said, picking up the polling report from a stack on his desk without looking and handing it over.

“Isn’t that down from last week?”

“Yeah.”

“And it was taken before this latest round of articles from Shield. Which means the numbers we have probably aren’t even relevant anymore.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Yauch.”

“But the vote’s in two days. If this changes people’s minds against the registration act-”

“Then we haven’t done a very good job selling it to them, have we? Besides, this is a democracy. If the people don’t want something, it’s our job to find out what they do want and give them that instead.”

“Is that what you’re doing, Thompson? Giving the people what they want?”

Yauch looked even more petulant than usual, a jealous anger radiating off his face, though Jack had no idea what he had to be jealous about in this conversation.

“I’m just doing what needs to be done,” Jack said, his stomach like a lead ball in his gut.

Yauch snorted, turning away. “Yeah right,” he mumbled as he left Jack’s office.

Jack sighed and went back to work. If even Yauch was doubting his abilities to help people maybe he really was wasting his time. He rubbed a hand over his face again and shook his head.

He needed a drink.

 

***

 

Daniel took a deep breath and opened the heavy wood door to the bar. A promise was a promise, after all, even when he didn’t always want to keep it.

Tuesday nights when Daniel wasn’t buried under a pile of research for a story, he traveled uptown to Harlem for a drink and a check in with his ex-boyfriend. Jason Wilkes was tall, genial, and a decent kisser as far as Daniel’s experience went, but after Daniel lost his leg, he became an appallingly clingy and overprotective boyfriend. To save their friendship and his own sanity, Daniel broke up with him with the promise not to disappear from each other’s lives completely.

Two months later, Jason met the man who became his husband and the two of them quickly opened Zero Matter, a popular yet intimate gay bar with an impressive drinks selection, often supplemented by Jason’s own experiments with mixology. Opening a bar was something Jason had always mentioned wanting to do someday, maybe after he and Daniel were both retired, but once he met Miles, he didn’t hesitate a second longer chasing his dream. And now that he had, Jason’s smile radiated contentment every time Daniel saw him, which was. Difficult.

Especially as he hadn’t smiled half as much in the last few months of his relationship with Daniel.

Rose teased Daniel for being jealous. Daniel firmly denied it.

Still, happy as he was for Jason getting what he wanted, it wasn’t fun to have his ex’s newfound bliss so prominently on display week after week, so Daniel often found himself buried under reporting research, too busy to make the trip. In fact, if Peggy hadn’t kicked him out of the office as she left for a date with her wife, he’d be buried in research tonight too. Breaking news waited for no man, after all. Even when there wasn’t much news to break.

When Daniel entered the bar, Jason wasn’t there yet, so he took his usual stool off to the side and ordered a scotch on the rocks. If Jason didn’t show by the time he finished it, well, he’d tried to be friendly. In the meantime he could sit here, enjoy the music of some pianist named Thelonious Monk, and watch the crowd for a while.

There was the usual mix of Blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans dancing, cruising, talking, and generally looking to have a good time. In the corner by the door, a white couple of tourist straights dressed for a night on the town appeared to be pleasantly scandalized.

Daniel sighed and took a sip of his drink; he didn’t have the energy for this tonight.

Two stools away from him, a very attractive blond in a well-cut suit sat down and ordered a large whiskey. Daniel wasn’t sure if it was the cut of his jaw or the breadth of his shoulders on his lithe frame, but something about the man seemed familiar even though Daniel was sure they’d never met before. He was drawn to the man in a way he couldn’t explain.

“Where do I know you from?” he asked, not entirely meaning to say the question aloud, but not really regretting it either. The man startled, then turned in his seat just enough to give Daniel an amused once over, his eyes sparkling and bringing a youthful vigor to his face that hadn’t been there just a moment before.

“That line work for you a lot?” he asked.

Daniel huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “Wasn’t really meant to be a line, but if it worked on you I’ll take it.”

The man studied his face, his smile widening the longer he looked at Daniel.

“Why the hell not?” he said, then held out his hand. “I’m Jack.”

“Daniel.”

Jack’s hand was unexpectedly callused, but warm and comforting in a way Daniel had only ever experienced once before in his life. Of course, he’d been half-dying of blood loss and being dragged out of rubble by a superhero at the time, so he shook the comparison away and focused his attention on Jack.

“You come here often?” Jack said.

“Now who’s using bad lines?” Daniel asked, his smile widening.

“Well, I figured you’d be the sort to appreciate it.”

“I do like the classics.”

“Seriously though. They gave you the good crystal,” Jack said, nodding toward Daniel’s drink. “They usually only do that for the regulars.”

Daniel looked at his rocks glass in surprise, then noted that Jack was drinking out of a similar one. Down the length of the bar, a man collected his own drink in a tumbler that was slightly different from theirs, not quite as nice.

“Huh.”

Jack grinned, a slightly smug twist to his lips that made the lesser part of Daniel want to put him in his place. It was unexpectedly erotic. Or maybe it had just been that long.

“Like I said, you come here often?”

Daniel smiled, hoping his bitterness at the situation didn’t show through. “I used to date one of the owners.”

Jack blinked in surprise and Daniel felt the old defensiveness rise in him. “What? You disapprove of interracial relationships?”

“Would I be here if I did? I’m more impressed you’re still on friendly enough terms with your ex not to worry he’d poison you for coming to his bar.”

“He’d just say alcohol is poison anyway.”

“Ah.” Jack nodded to himself. “Wilkes.”

“You’ve met?”

“Well, I am a regular.”

“And yet I’ve never seen you.”

“I usually wait until the weekend to come up here, but, well,” he gestured to his now half empty glass. “It’s been one of those days.”

“Crisis at work?”

“You could say that. My boss read something he didn’t like and now he’s on the warpath. Except I’m not really sure he knows how to properly go to war.”

“So it falls to you.”

“Among others. My boss is a pretty important guy.” Jack’s lips curled in a distasteful mockery of a smile as he said it, and something about the way he turned his head triggered a memory from a photo Daniel saw recently, something to do with a story Rogers was working on.

“That’s where I know you from,” Daniel said, mostly to himself. “You work for the mayor. I wouldn’t have expected any of his boys to frequent a place like this.”

Jack paled and darted his eyes around the room as though expecting to be arrested at any moment.

“It’s not a big deal,” Daniel said, incredulous.

Jack sneered. Daniel shouldn’t have found it as attractive as he did. “Maybe not working for some non-profit or liberal arts college, but working for the mayor? Trust me, it’s not anything I want getting out if I still want a job. Why do you think I dragged my ass all the way up here to Harlem?”

“You’d really be out of a job if anyone found out you were gay?”

Jack took a large gulp of his drink. “It’s still legal to fire someone for preferring their own sex. Especially if they act on it.”

“Yeah, but for the mayor’s office… That’d bring a hell of a lot of bad press.”

“That’s why I wouldn’t be fired, I’d be asked to resign. Forcefully if need be. Not nearly as scandalous when I’m the one leaving.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“That’s life.” Jack tilted his head and gestured with his glass as though making a toast. Daniel didn’t like the look of defeat in his eyes.

“Is the mayor really that much of an asshole?”

“Honestly?” Jack thunked his glass down on the bar. “He’s a self-serving, hypocritical, sanctimonious bastard who’s more concerned with lining the pockets of his Wall Street buddies and the jewelry boxes of his three mistresses and his handsy harpy of a wife than doing anything to substantially improve the lives of the hardworking men and women who live and work here. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

Daniel blinked at him. “Yeah, sounds like the kind of guy I’d want to work for too. I can see why you’re so protective of your job.”

Jack chuckled hollowly. “I didn’t get into it to work for him, I did it to serve the people of this city. Unfortunately, he’s the top guy right now, so he’s who I have to work with if I want to get ahead.”

“Better you than me,” Daniel said, taking a sip of his drink.

“What, I suppose you’re too noble to sacrifice your ideals to get the job done?”

Daniel snorted. “No, I’m not. I just know from experience that I can only stand being around people like that for so long before the urge to punch them in the face overtakes me, and I’d rather not get arrested for battery if I can help it.”

Jack hummed in amusement and took a sip of his drink. His eyes sparkled in the dim light of the club as he gave Daniel another once-over.

“So what do you do when you’re not laying bad lines on sad government types?” Jack asked.

Daniel braced himself, knowing the likely reaction to his answer. “I’m an investigative reporter for Shield News.”

As predicted, Jack’s face paled to ash.

“I’m not on the clock,” Daniel said quickly. “Everything you’ve told me is completely off the record, and I don’t do stories on City Hall anyway. I’m a crime guy. Our politics correspondent doesn’t need any help from me getting his stories filed.”

Jack’s shoulders relaxed, but the free and easy look he’d had on his face earlier was now replaced with something more guarded. Daniel felt a pang of loss for that.

“Yeah, I guess Bulldog Rogers is probably a little territorial when it comes to stories he considers his,” Jack said.

“You’ve met, I take it?”

“Scrawny little asshole with a chip on his shoulder? Yeah, I’ve had the pleasure. If you could call it that.”

Daniel chuckled at the common impression of his colleague.

“Word of advice? Never call him that around his husband. Or to his face. You won’t like the reaction.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed as he studied Daniel again, though this time Daniel got the distinct impression he wasn’t being checked out for sex as much as his character was being weighed and measured.

“Is it really true everyone at Shield is a queer then?”

Daniel shrugged off the slur. “Not everyone. But a lot of the staff. Giving our community a voice is the reason Peggy Carter founded the paper to begin with.”

“And somehow managed to make it one of the most respected papers in the world at the same time.”

“Well, good reporting speaks for itself.” Daniel said, then grinned and drank the rest of his drink.

Jack snorted a laugh. “So humble.”

“Hey, I wasn’t just talking about me.” He shrugged, faux-casually. “Though my stories are impeccable.”

Jack chuckled and Daniel felt warmth pool in his gut, proud that for once he wasn’t irreparably fucking things up with a guy he found attractive. If he played his cards right, he might even get a companion home for the night who was not only the best-looking guy he’d seen in awhile, but was smart and ambitious too.

Take that, Jason.

“So, you’re their crime guy, huh?” Jack asked, watching him. “I read your piece on Kinetos today. Very… diplomatic. Haven’t seen a lot of that the past couple of years.”

“No one’s seen a lot of _him_ the past couple of years. You can’t deny that crime rates have gone down since he’s been back, though.”

Jack hummed and took a large drink of his whiskey.

Right. Most people didn’t find crime statistics as interesting as Daniel did. He opted for directness over a probably ill-fated attempt to impress with his job.

“You want to get out of here?” Daniel asked. Jack eyed him again for a long moment, then turned to down the rest of his drink.

“Lead the way,” he said, a hint of challenge in his eyes.

Daniel grinned and maneuvered himself off his stool, only slightly unsteady on his prosthesis as he stood. Jack stared at his leg in a way Daniel was only too familiar with the past couple of years, and he squared his shoulders defensively before Jack could even open his mouth.

“You got a problem with a fake leg?”

Jack blinked and looked back up at his face. “Do you?”

“I’d find it a little difficult to walk without it, so no, I don’t.”

“Anything else you find difficult about it?”

Daniel gave him a flat look and nearly turned and left him then and there. But Jack still looked interested, and out of the corner of his eye Daniel saw Jason slip behind the bar, catching sight of him and shooting him that damnable smile he’d fallen in love with so many years ago. Of course, Jack’s smile was quite nice during its brief appearance as well. And Daniel found himself curious if he could bring it back.

“Only one way to find out,” he said.

Jack seemed to consider this, then stood and draped his arm around Daniel’s shoulders with a grin.

“So, your place or mine?” he asked.

 

***

 

Jack groaned as his back hit the wall beside the door to Daniel’s apartment. He instinctively absorbed the small amount of energy produced by the impact, concentrating more on where his hands were busy groping Daniel’s pert ass and his mouth was busy getting possibly the best damn kiss of his life. Daniel seemed to struggle between groping him back and trying to unlock his door without pulling away. Then again, that might be Jack’s fault for sticking his tongue in Daniel’s mouth so insistently.

Fuck, it had been too long since he’d done this.

A quick handjob in an alley or a rare blowjob in the bathroom stall at Zero Matter really had nothing on the promising potential of a good kisser and the ability to lay his partner out on an actual bed.

And damn was Daniel a good kisser. A little bit forceful, a little bit sweet, and-

Hey.

Oh, he’d gotten the door open. Yeah, inside, that would be better.

Jack followed Daniel inside, not letting go of him for an instant, then claimed his mouth again the second the door was closed.

Daniel didn’t seem to mind.

A couple of hours later, Jack was lazily walking back into the bedroom from the bathroom when a photo on one of Daniel’s shelves caught his eye. It was an official-looking black and white headshot of Daniel in a policeman’s uniform. He walked closer and picked it up.

Daniel looked so young. And proud. Whatever happened to his leg must have been bad enough to make him leave the force altogether if he was working for Shield News now. Jack felt a spike of sorrow shoot through him at the hope on Daniel’s face in the picture. It explained his obvious ties to the NYPD, anyway.

“I keep threatening to put that away in a box somewhere,” Daniel’s voice said from behind him.

Jack turned to see Daniel wearing just a pair of boxers and his artificial leg. His hair was mussed and his lips were swollen from kissing. Part of Jack wanted to sweep him up and carry him back into the bedroom, but he was curious about the picture.

“You were a cop?” he asked, putting the picture back on the shelf where he found it.

“Yeah. Third generation. I wanted to be a detective since I was a kid.”

“You ever make it?”

Daniel gave him a tight smile. “No. I was on my way up, but, well.” He gestured at his leg.

“You got hurt.”

Daniel nodded. Jack considered not asking, but figured Daniel could just not answer if he didn’t want to.

“How?”

“The Strategic Scientific School collapse. My partner and I were sent in to keep the students and staff out of the way of the fighting on the street, and the next thing we knew, the building came down on top of us. I was lucky, because the wall that crushed my leg came down just the right way to protect the rest of me.”

Jack’s stomach lurched like he’d just taken a bullet to the gut. He remembered that, the cop with the crushed legs. Hoping he could get him to help before he died in his arms. Blood everywhere, the smell of concrete dust and plaster in the air, the smell of death. Too few survivors.

Far too few survivors.

“You must hate Kinetos then,” Jack said. His voice sounded hollow even to his own ears.

Daniel looked at him in confusion. “Why would I hate Kinetos?”

“Because he’s the reason you lost your leg. He’s the reason you had to leave the job you loved.”

“I got injured in the line of duty and didn’t like the idea of taking a desk job at the precinct filling out the other officers’ paperwork. That’s not Kinetos’s fault.”

“If he hadn’t brought that school down on you-”

“He miscalculated. It happens.”

“People died. Little kids died because he fucked up.”

“Yeah, but he stopped the Master, who, if you weren’t aware, was in the middle of a plot that would have destroyed half the city, and possibly devastated the economy of the country in the process. Even more people would have died if Kinetos hadn’t taken him down.”

Jack shook his head. That didn’t make it okay. Nothing would ever make what happened that day okay.

Daniel stepped closer, watching Jack’s face. “The school collapse was a terrible thing,” he said softly, “but Kinetos did everything he could to save people and clean up the mess when the battle was over.”

“That’s not good enough,” Jack whispered.

“He saved my life. He didn’t have to stick around after they got the Master, but he did. He didn’t stop pulling people out until everyone was accounted for. A lot of superheroes don’t even bother with the cleanup, but he did. A lot more people would have died if he hadn’t gotten them to medical help when he did.” Daniel paused, then added, “Including me.”

Jack’s gut twisted in misery as he looked at the steadfast expression on Daniel’s face. He never would have been in a position to almost die if Kinetos hadn’t fucked up so badly. It didn’t matter that Daniel clearly believed what he was saying, because all the platitudes in the world wouldn’t bring those kids and their teachers back to life. They wouldn’t bring Daniel his leg back.

And no way would Daniel still feel so forgiving if he knew the truth of who Jack really was. Jack shook his head in disgust at himself. Trust him to ruin a good thing before it could actually become something in the first place.

“Look,” Daniel said. “We can’t do anything about it now. It’s been almost two years. I’ve accepted what happened. It was a terrible thing, but it’s in the past, and right now, all I want to do is go back to bed.”

“Sure,” Jack said, the pit in his stomach lurching in despair at the dismissal. “I’ll just-”

“You gonna join me for round two, or is that off the table?”

Jack blinked, dumbfounded by the flirty look on Daniel’s face.

He wanted to kiss Daniel then for everything that he was. He wanted to kiss him and fuck him and protect him from all the dangers of the world. Jack realized he wanted nothing more than to hold on to Daniel and never let go. At least not until Daniel told him he didn’t want him anymore. And he was willing to take the chance that Daniel never would tell him to leave.

Jack knew with a sudden clarity he wasn’t used to that he could easily fall in love with this man if given a chance.

He found himself grinning a slow grin before he could help it and walked over to crowd into Daniel’s space. Daniel didn’t give an inch.

“Well, if you’re up for it I’d be a damn fool to say no,” Jack said.

Daniel leaned into him, hips first, and grinned back. “Oh, I’m definitely up for it.”

Jack didn’t deserve it, but the sex was just as good the second time around.

 

***

 

Daniel kept catching himself smiling at work.

It wasn’t a bad thing, on its own, but there was something inappropriate about grinning like a sap when going over witness statements and crime scene photos. He didn’t want to get a reputation for actually enjoying other people’s pain.

Though the look on Jack’s face when Daniel cuffed him to the bed two nights ago…

Nope. Not going there. Working.

The problem was, Daniel couldn’t remember ever being so hung up on a guy he was dating. Even Jason hadn’t affected him like this, and they’d dated for almost three years before Daniel broke it off. There was just something about Jack, something that made him feel weirdly honored to be the recipient of his affection.

And damn did that man know how to show his affection.

Prickly as he could sometimes be, Jack was an almost overwhelmingly attentive lover in the bedroom. Daniel had always assumed talk of worshiping a lover was just a poetic metaphor for lovemaking, but Jack actually did it. Daniel still shuddered at the memory of Jack’s lips and tongue tracing every line of his body not long after they first met, the gentle caress of his hands playing Daniel’s nerves like a well-tuned instrument. It had been four months with a lot of stellar sex in between then and now and he still couldn’t forget it.

The biggest problem between them was that Jack was obviously hiding something. Daniel wasn’t sure what, wasn’t even sure if it was just a side effect of Jack being closeted at work or paranoia about Daniel’s job as a reporter, but it still felt like Jack was holding something back, lying by omission, even as his kisses drew Daniel ever further in.

For a panicked couple of days, Daniel wondered if Jack wasn’t hiding a wife and kids out in the suburbs somewhere. An afternoon making calls and digging into marriage records in the tri-state area was enough to reassure Daniel that particular worst case scenario wasn’t true, but it did nothing to answer the question of what Jack was actually hiding.

Even Jack’s small, Upper East Side bachelor apartment told Daniel nothing about what he might be keeping from him. Though, to be fair, he usually had other things on his mind when he visited. Like the quickest way to get all of Jack’s clothes off. Or how long it would take him to make Jack moan. Or the way the street lights played over Jack’s face as they talked about nothing and everything late into the night.

That usually led to more kissing, which in turn tended to lead to-

“Look at that smile,” Rose said. Daniel blinked and saw that she had somehow appeared beside his desk without him noticing. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you smile this much, not even when Peggy’s in the room.”

“Rose,” Daniel said, rolling his eyes.

“You ever gonna introduce me to your new guy, or is he still supposed to be the worst kept secret in the office?”

Daniel sighed, knowing he wouldn’t win this one.

“He’s-” Daniel cut himself off, not entirely sure how to finish that sentence. Rose seemed to notice his hesitation. She frowned.

“He’s treating you well, right? I don’t have to give him a beat down on your behalf, do I?”

“No! No, we’re great. He’s great. One of the best boyfriends I’ve had, actually.”

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. “There’s a but in there.”

Daniel opened his mouth to respond, but still couldn’t find the words.

“He’s not closeted is he?”

Daniel sighed. “Yeah.”

“Daniel.”

“It’s not like that. He’s got no problem going out in public with me, or being with me, but he could lose his job if they found out he’s gay, so we have to be careful who sees us together. It’s kind of a high profile job.”

Rose hummed in understanding, but it had a note of disapproval in it. Rose was a big proponent of visibility activism.

“And you’re okay with that? With none of your friends knowing who he is or meeting him because that could make things difficult for him?”

“Jason knows him.” Rose’s eyebrows flew up at that. Daniel smirked. “We met at his bar, actually.”

“And he approves?”

“Jason lost the right to approve or disapprove of who I date when he got together with Miles.”

“Daniel.”

“But because I know you won’t drop it otherwise, yeah, he does approve. He told me so just the other night.”

Rose smiled at him, a soft motherly thing he knew she’d scowl at him for if he drew attention to it.

“Alright,” she said. “I guess I can let the closeted thing pass. For now. At least we know your man has good taste in flowers.”

Daniel flushed at the memory of the large bouquet Jack had delivered to the Shield offices the day after they first met. It was certainly one way of asking for a more proper first date. It also gave everyone, but particularly Rose and Peggy, ammunition to tease him with for weeks.

He opened his mouth to snark back at her, but his phone rang, so he settled for leveling her a look while he answered it.

“Sousa.”

“I read your article this morning,” Jack said on the other end of the line. Daniel felt how goofy his smile instantly became and resigned himself to a thorough grilling from Rose later.

“Jack,” he said, glancing up at Rose. “I was just talking about you.” Rose got an excited gleam in her eye, and Daniel had to grab her wrist to stop her from walking over and connecting to the call from Wilson’s phone the next desk over. “But you know I didn’t have an article out today.”

“I’ll have you know Mayor Chadwick is not pleased,” Jack said sternly. Daniel’s brow furrowed for a moment before he heard Jack badly muffle the connection on his end. “I’m sorry, Miss Frost, was there something you needed? I’m afraid what I’m about to say won’t be fit for ladies’ ears, and certainly not ones as lovely and delicate as your own.”

Daniel knew he was making a face at that from the insistent way Rose poked at his shoulder, but he couldn’t be bothered to care as a low, seductive murmur came from Jack’s end of the phone.

“That sounds like an awfully flirty conversation to have with the boss’s wife when your boyfriend is on the phone,” Daniel said with a grin. Rose’s eyebrows shot up.

There was more murmuring on Jack’s end, then a pause followed by a crackle across the line as though Jack had just sighed into the receiver.

“That woman is half succubus, I swear,” Jack said in an undertone. “Also, you’re an ass.”

Daniel laughed. “You love my ass.” Jack hummed. “I’m pretty sure you flirting with her isn’t helping to put her off any.”

“How else should I deal with her? She’s the brains behind this outfit; I can’t just piss her off, and I sure as hell can’t tell her I’m taken.”

“Are you? Taken, I mean.”

Rose raised her eyebrows at him again and Daniel shifted in his chair so he wasn’t facing her anymore.

“I sure as hell hope so,” Jack said, then lowered his voice. “In fact, I was hoping you might take me out later tonight. Say, the Frolic Room at 8:30?”

Daniel smiled, his mind already jumping ahead to what would undoubtedly follow after the Frolic Room.

“I think I could manage that,” he said, voice low. Rose gave him a smirk and he turned away from her a little more fully. “Barring any new mischief from Mindwarp between now and then, I think I can manage that just fine.”

Jack made a disgusted noise. “That asshole. Making people kill themselves after doing who the hell knows what for him first. It’s not right. For all we know he could be a Communist spy.”

“I haven’t ruled that out,” Daniel said. “You know he’s going after public buildings now, right? It’s starting to become more and more of a pattern.”

“And of course you’re keeping track of that pattern because you’re you.”

Daniel glanced at the city map on his desk he’d been doing just that with.

“You know me, always thorough.” He took a breath before Jack could come back at him with something provocative and barreled on. “Listen, I wanted to wait to say anything until I saw you again, but I’m starting to get worried about you. It looks like he’s building up to an attack on City Hall.”

Jack cursed.

“You’re being careful, right?”

“How the hell are you supposed to protect yourself against a guy who can make you do things just by talking?”

“You don’t listen to him.”

“Easier said than done by the sound of it.”

“No, I’m serious, don’t listen to him. Start carrying earplugs in your pocket and put them in the second you get a suspicious feeling about the way someone’s talking. If you can’t hear what he’s saying, he can’t work his powers on you, right?”

There was a creak like Jack just sat back in his chair, followed by a faint, “Huh.”

“I submitted a piece earlier today recommending just that. Should be out in tonight’s edition. If enough people read it, maybe he’ll stop being able to use his powers so effectively.”

“You’re a clever sonofabitch, you know that?”

“I try.”

“Earplugs. Simple, but probably effective. I’ll be damned.”

Daniel smiled. “I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself, college boy. I thought the Odyssey was required reading.”

Jack made a noise that translated as a crackle down the line. “It might have been required, but that doesn’t mean I actually read it. I wasn’t the most responsible guy back in my college days.”

“I think I remember you saying something about that before, and my past self still wants to kick your ass for it.”

Jack laughed. “I’m sure. Maybe your near future self could come up with a suitable punishment for me tonight instead.”

Daniel successfully managed to avoid Rose’s eye at that, but he didn’t manage to hide the blush that blossomed over his face, or the intrigued lust he was sure flashed through his eyes. Rose crossed her arms and gave him a shark’s grin.

He sighed. She was so going to grill him later.

“I think I could be persuaded.” He tried to wave Rose off, but then Peggy was there and Daniel felt his entire body flame red. Oh god, had she been close enough to hear him flirting with Jack? “Hang on a sec,” he said into the phone, then gave Peggy his full attention. She didn’t waste words.

“Mindwarp is attacking the Main Branch of the New York Public Library.”

Daniel’s stomach dropped.

“What?”

“It’s all over the radio. He’s got at least fifty people held under his sway.”

“Sounds like I’ll have to take a raincheck on that date tonight,” Daniel said into the phone. Peggy’s face fell when he said the word ‘date’. She might tease him for it, but he knew she was pleased as punch he was actually dating again.

“Did I hear that right?” Jack said. “Mindwarp’s attacking the _library_?”

“Yeah. Listen, I’ve got to go,” Daniel said, checking his watch. “If I leave now I should be able to get there in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Peggy and Rose nodded at him, both of them gripping his shoulder in turn before stalking off to corral some of the junior reporters to start making calls. Daniel stood and collected his jacket from the back of his chair, his phone still cradled against his shoulder.

“You’re not actually going over there?” Jack demanded.

“This is my job, Jack. This is my beat. I need to be up there.”

“No, you don’t. There is nobody saying you have to be on the scene for a supervillain attack.”

“Yeah, there is. Me.”

“Daniel, I don’t want you going anywhere near him,” Jack said, urgency crackling along every syllable.

“Earplugs, remember? I’m not about to not take my own advice.”

“It’s not safe. You-”

“This is my job, Jack. I’ve got to go.”

“Don’t you dare go near him, Daniel. I mean it,” Jack snarled.

Daniel scowled.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he said, and hung up, Jack’s voice echoing angrily out of the receiver until the moment Daniel put it back in the cradle.

He was going to pay for that, but he had a job to do. Hopefully Jack could bring himself to understand. And if not… well, he’d lived without the jerk before, he could do it again. Even if he really didn’t want to.

 

***

 

“Fucking stubborn asshole,” Jack growled as he jerked on his supersuit in a small, disused office on the 32nd floor of the Manhattan Municipal Building. “I should lock his ass up and throw away the key. You’d think he has a death wish or something going after known supervillains like he’s impervious to harm.”

He pulled his cowl up and strode purposefully to the window. It stuck as he pulled it open, but eventually he made a gap wide enough to fit through. He crouched on the windowsill, psyching himself up and getting a feel for the hot July air currents pulling at his body.

Flying was the one part of his powers Kinetos could never quite get used to. Of course, discovering that he could use air currents to fly while he was falling to his death off the Empire State Building mere weeks after becoming a superhero might have something to do with his continuing unease as well. That was not fun. Unfortunately, flying was the fastest way to travel, and he needed to get uptown fast. He’d already wasted enough time running across the street and taking the elevator up to this office to change.

But he needed the elevation to fly.

He needed to fly to keep Daniel safe.

Daniel.

Daniel was more important than his hatred of flying.

Right.

Kinetos took a deep breath and leapt off the side of the building.

The humid air batted at him, stinging his eyes and trying to steal his breath as he absorbed its power. After a few seconds of terrifying free fall, Kinetos took control and shot north to Midtown, seeking out whatever air currents he could find to fly him to his destination faster.

And there, right where Daniel had said he would be on the steps of the New York Public Library, was Mindwarp.

The man was shorter than Kinetos thought he would be. If not for his costume, Kinetos got the feeling Mindwarp was completely unremarkable, which was probably the point with powers like his. He was standing astride Patience as though the stone lion were a steed, twisting a ring on his left hand, and pontificating about something the crowd in front of him was listening to with rapt attention.

Kinetos landed behind a hotdog vendor part of the way down East 41st Street. The man gave him an unimpressed glare, muttering something probably insulting in Polish before he turned back to his newspaper, completely ignoring both Kinetos and the supervillain across the street.

Clearly he’d lived in the city a while.

Kinetos surveyed the scene before him.

There were maybe a hundred people standing at the library steps, listening to Mindwarp talk. If he’d come here as Jack, he might be able to infiltrate the crowd and get close to Mindwarp that way, but in his pale blue supersuit, Kinetos was sure to stand out for the superhero he was. And once he left the cover of the hotdog stand, there was nothing for him to hide behind on the approach to the library. Unless he came at Mindwarp from inside the library itself… but that would take too long. Daniel could get there at any minute.

Kinetos sighed and grabbed a paper napkin off the hotdog cart. He tore it in half and worked the wadded up paper under his cowl and into his ears to block his hearing. The usual sounds of New York at lunchtime faded to a muffled murmur.

He felt instantly more vulnerable.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. How was he supposed to do this?

If he charged straight in, Mindwarp could use his powers of persuasion to turn the crowd against him, and the last thing Kinetos wanted to do was fight off a crowd of civilians. Not only would it trash what little reputation he had left, but it would also mean fighting civilians. It wasn’t their fault they were walking through this part of the city when Mindwarp decided to pay the lions a visit.

Even if Kinetos was somehow able to reach Mindwarp through the crowd, he didn’t have the energy reserves to knock this guy out with one punch the way he wanted, not after his cross-town flight.

He needed to do better about laying on reserves of energy over the course of the week. Maybe he could get Daniel to be a little more… physical in the bedroom. It’s not like either of them would mind it, and there were worse ways he’d built up his reserves in the past. Those handcuffs the other night….

Nope. Not going there. Kinetos had a villain to take down, and he needed to do it before Daniel got here and put himself into danger, the idiot. Hell, his train might already be pulling into the 42 Street - Bryant Park Station. Or worse, the 5 Av Station.

Across the street, Mindwarp just kept. On. Talking.

Kinetos had developed a deep resentment of men who didn’t know when to shut up. Part of it was down to working with so many politicians, but most of it was down to Vernon, whose taunts still haunted his dreams.

The old betrayal roiled in Kinetos’s gut, the anger outweighing his anxiousness for a moment.

Fuck it. He’d just go straight in and deal with the consequences when they came. That seemed to be what he was good at anyway.

He walked slowly and purposefully toward Mindwarp, doing his best not to draw any unwanted attention to himself. Everyone in the crowd was so focused on the supervillain that not a single one of them paid Kinetos the slightest attention.

Mindwarp spotted him and began talking to him directly, his movements calm and gentle and his face inviting of confidences. Kinetos stopped in place, then did his best to look trusting, fascinated. He mimicked the body language of the people in the crowd around him, moving closer to Mindwarp as though he needed to be as close to him as possible to better hear his words of wisdom.

When Kinetos was in the middle of the crowd, Mindwarp smiled and began to talk to his victims again.

Shit.

Civilian attack it was then. His heart started pounding in his chest. He hoped he could protect himself without injuring any of them too badly.

On his right, Kinetos noticed a steady, slightly jerky movement coming toward him that didn’t match the new restlessness of the crowd around him. He turned his head slightly to look and felt the brief surge of joyful recognition he always felt when he saw Daniel, before it was quickly replaced by sinking dread.

Daniel was here.

Daniel was in danger.

Fuck.

Daniel was… talking to Mindwarp. If Kinetos didn’t know better, he’d think Daniel was barking questions at Mindwarp as though he were in a crowd of reporters at a press conference and not surrounded by civilians who were looking more confused by the second.

Kinetos blinked, then allowed a slow grin to brighten his face.

That clever bastard. He could kiss him.

With everyone distracted by whatever it was Daniel was asking, Kinetos moved through the crowd with ease, mounting the steps by Patience before Mindwarp noticed him again.

Kinetos climbed up onto the plinth where Patience reposed. Mindwarp was talking at him again.

“Sorry, can’t hear you,” Kinetos said, then punched him once in the nose and once in the temple, catching him as he fell. He pulled off one of Mindwarp’s gloves and stuffed it in the man’s mouth.

Just like that it was over. Mindwarp was defeated.

Patience took it all in stride the way he did everything else.

 

***

 

Just because something seemed to be real didn’t mean it was true. The mind made connections all the time that weren’t based on the truth.

Daniel flipped through his interview notes again.

Six people had mentioned hearing Kinetos telling Mindwarp he couldn’t hear him talking just before he punched him out. Six. None of whom knew each other before the attack on the library. There were no previous reports of Kinetos having any kind of hearing impairment, so that meant he must have plugged his ears with something before arriving at the library to confront Mindwarp.

And Daniel had told Jack to wear earplugs not even a half hour before. And he’d told Jack where Mindwarp was.

But that didn’t mean anything. Anyone could think of wearing earplugs to protect themselves against a supervillain who could hypnotise with his voice. It wasn’t that big of a leap. And surely superheroes had their own ways of finding out when people were in trouble. It didn’t mean Jack knew Kinetos. It didn’t mean Jack _was_ Kinetos.

But he could have sworn Kinetos looked right at him. Had smiled at him, even.

Sure, Daniel had provided the distraction he needed to take out Mindwarp, but that smile… Daniel knew that smile.

Daniel shook his head. He was being ridiculous. Of course Jack and Kinetos weren’t the same person. For one thing, Jack hated Kinetos with a fiery passion. He looked like he wanted to hit something every time Kinetos was mentioned, even in passing. It made no sense that they could be one and the same.

Still. Daniel’s gut was rarely wrong.

And-

This was not what he should be focusing on right now. His Mindwarp story and its follow up were already put to bed. Anything to do with Kinetos needed to be set aside now as well. There were more important things happening in the city than Daniel’s idle speculations about his boyfriend being the superhero who saved his life.

Which were ridiculous anyway.

He tossed his notebook on the desk and pulled the papers he was looking at earlier in front of him to study them again.

Joseph Manfredi was getting into real estate. There were a string of dummy corporations and false leads trying to obfuscate it, but Daniel made his living off of revealing the truth, and the evidence was clear for anybody who went looking for it that Joseph Manfredi was getting into real estate.

It wasn’t that unusual for a crime boss of his stature to diversify his business dealings in that way. Hell, he was already in the construction business. What was interesting was where he was doing it.

Hell’s Kitchen was Mulligan’s turf.

If Manfredi was trying to start a turf war with the Irish things could get bloody real fast. The question was why he would bother. As far as Daniel could tell, Manfredi was sitting pretty off the kickbacks of the longshoremen working the Brooklyn docks. There was no reason he needed to go after the West Side piers too, not unless he was getting greedy, and Manfredi wasn’t the greedy type.

Daniel looked at the property records again. Finow Street. Why was that familiar?

He checked the city map he kept at his desk and found it. Two blocks from the theater district, two blocks from the piers. Kind of a perfect location for any number of new business opportunities if it weren’t in such a bad neighborhood. But then that wouldn’t put off someone like Manfredi. Whose girlfriend was a famous Broadway actress. And Jack’s boss’s wife.

Hmm.

He got up to get himself another cup of coffee. He was still missing something, he just didn’t know what.

On his way to the coffee pot he passed Peggy’s open office door, where she and Underwood were talking about Mindwarp, who had been revealed by police to be one Johann Fennhoff. Underwood had all but pounced on Peggy at the news when it came in yesterday before disappearing only to pounce on Peggy again when she showed up late to work an hour ago. Apparently Underwood had written a couple of stories on the guy, something about a fire…

“He’s saying the mayor is the one who burned his building down two years ago,” Underwood said clearly enough for Daniel to hear her. Daniel loitered close enough to peek into the office.

Peggy pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “Even if that were true, what could Chadwick possibly have to gain from burning down one tenement building out of the thousands that line New York’s streets? That sounds more like the action of a low level gangster than the mayor of a major city.”

Underwood shrugged. “Maybe Fennhoff was standing in the way of something. Maybe Chadwick’s actress wife wants to build a theater on Finow Street and Fennhoff wouldn’t sell. Maybe Chadwick was just feeling particularly fire happy that day.”

Daniel sucked in a breath as one more puzzle piece fell into place. In the office, Peggy scowled.

“I will grant you that the loss of his business and the deaths of his family could be enough to turn Fennhoff into a supervillain, but to blame the mayor?”

“Do you really think he was operating in a vacuum? Attacking people and places at random?” Underwood asked. “Peggy. You’re smarter than that.”

“You expect me to take the rantings of a madman at face value. A madman, may I point out, who is known for his ability to hypnotize and deceive. What’s to say he isn’t trying to manipulate the situation? He’s facing, at minimum, spending the rest of his life in solitary confinement wearing a mask that looks like an instrument of torture. Of course he’s going to try anything he can think of to get a lesser sentence.”

“And just how would his accusations against Chadwick achieve that? He’s making some pretty big claims. Conspiracy. Embezzling. Murder. That’s quite the case for libel if it’s not true. Combined with his other crimes it could get him sent to the chair.”

“You know, she’s got a point,” Daniel said. Peggy and Underwood turned to look at him, Underwood giving him one of those lazily predatory looks she was so fond of.

Peggy sighed, rolling her eyes. “Oh, not you too.”

“Peggy, think about it,” he said, walking into the office. “Supers are born with their powers, right? It’s something they hide all their lives unless they decide to use them for evil or the greater good.”

“Your point?”

“If Underwood’s right, Fennhoff only became a supervillain after his family was killed in the Finow Fire two years ago. And then he immediately started going after minor city officials and businessmen in very specific industries. I knew all those suicides I’ve been covering for months were connected, I just couldn’t figure out how or why, even after we learned it was Mindwarp behind them. This could explain it.”

Underwood’s eyes sparkled. “Somebody knew how the fire started,” she sang.

“And who started it,” Daniel said.

Peggy looked between them. “You’re suggesting it was intentional. But why? What purpose would there be in setting fire to a run down building in Hell’s Kitchen? Insurance?” She held a hand up as Underwood opened her mouth to speak. “I’m not interested in any more of your conspiracy theories.”

“Are they conspiracy theories if they’re true?”

“Maybe it really was a shakedown,” Daniel said, ignoring Underwood. He caught a glimpse of a potential ad Peggy had on her desk, realization sparking in his brain like fireworks. He walked over to pick it up, then handed it to her. “Maybe it had something to do with this.”

The ad was for a new development called Clinton Village and featured a bird’s eye view of identical square, concrete and brick buildings covering some ten city blocks to the west of the theater district. They hadn’t even broken ground yet and they were already advertising apartments for sale costing $9,000 or more.

“More ugly buildings. What of it?” Peggy asked.

“Finow Street is in Hell’s Kitchen, right in the middle of where they want this development to be. And guess who’s a big proponent of this development in the first place.”

“The mayor does seem awfully keen to break ground on it,” Underwood sang.

“He’s clearing the slums,” Peggy said. “He has ambitions of being the next LaGuardia, not that he’s capable of it.”

“They can’t use eminent domain on this, not after the stink it caused at Stuy Town a decade ago,” Daniel said. “That means they’ve got to get all the property owners to sell, even if it means some less than honest persuasion. And guess who’s doing some of that persuading.”

“The Queen of England?” Peggy asked flippantly.

“Joseph Manfredi.”

Peggy blinked. “Weren’t he and Whitney Frost-”

“Dating? Yeah. Still are, according to my sources.”

“Your ‘sources’,” Underwood said, smirking at him. “Is that what you’re calling him now? I didn’t think you were the type for that sort of thing. How naughty.”

“Dottie,” Peggy chided.

Underwood shrugged and turned her attention back to Peggy. “I told you Frost wanted something from that building,”

Peggy pursed her lips and began to pace. “If there’s any truth to what the two of you are saying we need proof, not just speculation and hearsay. If you’re right, this could be big enough to rock the very foundation of the city. I need incontrovertible evidence from both of you before we print a single word.”

They both nodded at her, Underwood slightly mocking and Daniel as serious as a soldier on the way to battle.

“I know a guy,” Daniel said. “He tends to know what’s what in that neighborhood. If anybody might know what’s going on out there, it’d be him.”

“I don’t like the idea of you skulking around where Joseph Manfredi might hear about it,” Peggy said.

“He won’t. I’ll leave now, ask a few questions, and be back before dinner. I’ve got a date tonight; I have no intention of standing Jack up.”

Besides, there were some things about Jack he needed to figure out if he was ever going to be able to fully concentrate on his work again. Seeing him would at least be a start toward that.

Peggy considered him for a while, her mouth twisting to the side.

“Alright,” she said finally. “Just don’t do anything that could get you killed. You’re far too valuable a reporter to die for a story on some ugly apartment buildings.” Daniel smiled at that, ignoring Underwood rolling her eyes behind Peggy’s back. “You’ll check in when you’re done?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Good. At least we’ll know where to start looking if you don’t come back.”

Daniel gave her a look, then went to his desk to collect his things. It was past 3 o’clock, so there was a chance Foggy might still be in court, but even if he missed him he could leave him a message at his office and canvass Finow Street instead. Now that Daniel suspected everything he did, he was anxious to learn more, whatever the source. And the more sources he had, the better.

He drummed his fingers on his prosthetic knee all the way uptown on the subway ride to the 50 St Station. If they were right about this, it could be a career making story, which Underwood was no doubt salivating over. Daniel was less excited for that aspect of it. He wanted justice done, always, but he’d seen what happened to some reporters who made it big. A Pulitzer would be nice, but it also brought attention Daniel knew he could do without.

And what would happen to Jack if his boss was convicted of corruption? Would he be swept up in everything too? Would he lose the job he wanted so desperately to keep?

Though Daniel couldn’t help wondering if the job wasn’t a cover. If Jack really was Kinetos, maybe he was working for Chadwick on purpose to watch him. Maybe-

Daniel shook his head. Jack wasn’t Kinetos. He was being ridiculous. He needed to keep his mind on the story, where it belonged. Daniel hauled himself up the subway steps and walked with purpose into the depths of Hell’s Kitchen.

Foggy, it turned out, was not in his office, and the neighbors along the street weren’t terribly helpful in giving him quotes about anything either.

Everyone he spoke to, men, women, shopkeepers, bums - even the kids, had nothing to say about Manfredi, Clinton Village, or the Finow Street Fire two years ago. Half of them wouldn’t even let him finish a sentence before turning away.

Daniel ground his teeth and continued on.

Halfway down the block between 10th and 11th Avenues, Daniel ran right into Manfredi and two of his goons. His stomach dropped to the soles of his shoes.

“You Daniel Sousa?” one of the goons asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“Me,” Manfredi said. “I heard you were sniffing around asking questions about me and my business in this neighborhood.”

“Well, I’m curious why you’ve got any business in this neighborhood to begin with,” Daniel said, putting on a bravado he didn’t particularly feel. “Cause it looks like you’re trying to start a turf war with Hughie Mulligan, and I just can’t see why you would want to do that. I thought the two of you were friends.”

“We are friends,” Manfredi said. “And you can leave Hughie outta this. What do you want?”

Daniel shrugged. “Human interest story?”

Manfredi sniffed and looked away, then looked back at Daniel and leaned into his face. Daniel did his best not to so much as flinch.

“I don’t like you,” Manfredi said, “and I don’t like reporters sniffing around where it ain’t their business to sniff.”

“If there’s nothing to find, I won’t find anything.”

“You’re damn right you won’t find anything,” Manfredi said, turning away.

“‘Course if there were something to find, it could get a little inconvenient for you and your associates.” Daniel knew it was a stupid thing to say the moment it came out of his mouth, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

“The hell you know about any of my associates?” Manfredi asked, fisting his hands into the front of Daniel’s suit jacket. Daniel’s heart rate ratcheted up like an express train.

“I guess that’s the question, ain’t it?” Daniel said.

Manfredi’s eyes gleamed in a way Daniel recognized from getting beat up as a kid. He just hoped when they shot him it would be a clean and quick death. If he was lucky, they’d dump his body in a way that wouldn’t be too traumatic for Peggy and Jack to have to see.

Oh, damn. Jack.

“How’s about we go for a little drive?” Manfredi asked, pushing Daniel away from him. Daniel barely caught his balance before he was penned in on both sides and being escorted to a Cadillac the color of fresh butter.

“Come on, put him in the trunk,” Manfredi said. “Move it! What’re you waiting for?”

The goons maneuvered Daniel into the trunk of the car without a fight from him. If he behaved, they might keep him conscious, and if he was conscious he had half a chance of determining where they took him, and, more importantly, a chance to engineer an escape.

As the door of the trunk clunked closed over his head, Daniel only had one thought:

Jack was gonna be pissed.

 

***

 

Jack was terrified.

A worried phone call from Peggy Carter, of all people, was all it took for Jack’s hopeful optimism about his date with Daniel that night to turn to gut-wrenching horror.

Manfredi had Daniel.

Carter suspected it, but Jack was sure of it, the moment she told him where Daniel went. He knew there was something fishy about that damn development when the preliminary specs landed on his desk all those months ago, but he’d ignored his instincts, even when Chadwick and Frost both pushed for it too hard. It hadn’t seemed worth the fight, at the time, not with Frost in the mix. And if Manfredi was involved, it meant Frost was definitely determined to get her way.

Whatever Daniel dug up, whatever questions he was asking could be enough to get him killed.

If Manfredi had him, he might be dead already.

It took him too long to reach the upper floors of the Manhattan Municipal Building to trade his business suit for his supersuit, too long to pry open one of the windows and fly out to Brooklyn in the sticky summer heat, the air currents in short supply. It took far too long to locate the exact warehouse in the string of warehouses Manfredi was using for his “alternative business operations”. The longshoremen he interrogated there were just as unhelpful as he expected them to be. It took everything he had not to punch their teeth in to make them talk.

With every minute that passed Kinetos’s heart sank a little lower, his anger burned a little brighter.

If Daniel was dead, he would show no mercy ever again. He’d burn the world down before he gave any criminal the benefit of the doubt again.

Finally, after far too long methodically searching every corner of the most likely warehouse, he found him in a small storage room.

Kinetos burst into the room, the door crashing against the wall with a bang. In the middle of the room, tied to a chair with a bruised cut on his forehead was Daniel, alone and unguarded. Kinetos’s heart thudded in his chest.

He was alive.

Daniel was alive, and mostly unharmed, and alive, and they’d even left him his leg, and he was alive.

Oh fuck, he was alive.

Kinetos’s legs almost gave out from under him at the relief of it. He pulled himself together and strode across the room, eyeing the knots in the ropes for weak points as he went.

Daniel stared at him, jaw agape. It happened more often than anyone liked to admit. It wasn’t every day that people were rescued by a superhero, after all, even in New York City.

Kinetos untied Daniel faster than his gloved hands could properly move, dipping into his energy reserves to pull the knots apart by force when necessary. It was worth it. Daniel had to be safe.

“Come on,” Kinetos said, modulating his voice slightly deeper the way he always did in the suit. Daniel got to his feet, but continued to stare at him. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

Daniel wouldn’t move, and Kinetos was tempted to sling him over his shoulder and carry his stupid ass to safety. He couldn’t protect him properly while they were still on Maggia turf and Daniel had to be safe. He had to be.

Kinetos grabbed him by the wrist to pull him along, but Daniel only allowed himself to be pulled a few steps before he planted his feet and held his ground. Kinetos bit back a groan of dismay and glared at him. He’d collapse his leg under himself pulling shit like that.

“It’s not safe here, come on.”

“Jack?” Daniel whispered.

Kinetos felt the bottom fall out of his world. Suddenly there was no air in the room and he barely had the strength to remain standing. How could he know? He couldn’t know Kinetos’s identity. It was hard enough keeping him safe as it was, but if he knew, if anyone knew-

Daniel slid a hand over Kinetos’s face, cupping his cheek tenderly the way he had so many times in the past. He smoothed his thumb over Kinetos’s cheekbone and stared up at him in wonder.

“You’re Kinetos? Really?”

Kinetos’s stomach twisted again, despair eating away at his brain, and he nodded stiffly. He had to say something. He had to-

“Look, Daniel, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I’m the reason-”

Daniel cut him off with a hand to his mouth and shook his head at him.

“I’ve got a feeling the reason you hate Kinetos so much when you are Kinetos has more to do with what happened a couple years ago than some bizarre psychological attempt at a cover. And I don’t care. I forgave you a long time ago, and that doesn’t change now that I know who you are. I love you anyway. Still.”

Kinetos’s heart gave a painful thud in his chest.

“You love me?”

Daniel blinked, a slight nervousness passing over his face, before he grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I never said I had good taste.”

Kinetos knew he should pretend to be insulted, that Daniel was teasing him, the bastard, but all he could think was that Daniel loved him. Him. Government flunky by day and incompetent superhero the rest of the time.

Daniel knew all of his worst secrets, all of what made him who he was, but he loved him anyway.

He loved him.

Kinetos’s heart thudded wildly and his insides felt like they were made of jello. Against all reason not to, Kinetos swallowed down his nerves and pushed back his cowl.

“I love you too,” Jack said.

Daniel looked at him in awe, then pulled him in for a bruising kiss.

Jack absorbed the slight force of it and allowed himself to get lost in Daniel’s mouth for not nearly long enough before he pulled away.

This wasn’t the place and certainly not the time for that.

“Daniel, I mean it. We need to get you out of here. It’s not safe.”

“It’s just Manfredi and his boys; I’m not that worried about them.”

Jack stared at him.

“Not that worried?”

“I’m a crime reporter, Jack. It’s my job to know who to worry about and when. There’s someone more powerful out there pulling Manfredi’s strings. Someone blonde and beautiful and very close to your boss.” He paused, then gave Jack a look. “Who isn’t you.”

Jack blushed, pleased by the implication that Daniel found him beautiful. Then he shook his head.

Not the time for that.

“Just because Manfredi’s not calling the shots doesn’t mean we don’t have to worry about him,” he said.

“Are you really telling me you didn’t go through the building knocking out every Maggia goon you came across on the way to get me?”

Jack opened his mouth to retort then closed it again. That’s exactly what he’d done.

Daniel grinned. “I knew I was dating you for a reason.”

“Yes. That’s why you’re dating me,” Jack said evenly. “Goon removal on request.”

Daniel’s grin widened and he leaned in to smack a brief kiss on Jack’s mouth. Jack pouted at the shortness of it.

Not the time for that.

“Seriously, Daniel, we need to get out of here.”

“No, we need to find hard evidence that Manfredi’s working for your boss.”

Jack sighed and rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows that. The government is riddled with corruption fed and encouraged by the Maggia. And if not the Maggia, then business leaders out to make the biggest profit possible by controlling the legislature and the city council. That’s how the system works.”

“And you’re okay with that? That a system designed to work for the people only works for the few?”

“We work with what we have, and for everything else I’m this guy,” Jack said, gesturing down at his supersuit.

“And what about the rest of us who don’t have superpowers? We’re just supposed to sit around and take it?”

“Daniel-”

“We can do something about this, Jack. We can stop the cycle of corruption. Isn’t that something worth fighting for?”

“You have no idea what you’re asking. No idea how deep this goes.”

“Then help me find out.”

Jack looked at him, at his strong, steadfast jaw and determined brown eyes. He was loyal and smart and so damn good Jack still wondered what the hell Daniel was doing dating him in the first place. He’d make such a better superhero than Jack, even with his leg.

And somehow, Daniel loved him anyway.

Which meant maybe he saw something in Jack that made him worth loving.

Jack thought back, beyond his job, beyond Vernon and his betrayal, beyond his own fuck ups as Kinetos, and tried to remember why he became a superhero in the first place. Hell, why he took his worthless city job when he could have become a lawyer or a businessman like his dad wanted. He did it because he wanted to help people, to protect his city, improve it. And how was he doing that now? By ignoring the corruption around him and letting the non-superpowered bad guys do just about whatever they wanted, how was he helping people? How was he protecting his city?

He wasn’t.

And here was his boyfriend, wounded, bleeding, with no superpowers of his own, offering him a way to fix the wrongs that had been dragging Jack down for so long. If he wanted to be a hero, it was about damn time he started acting like one.

Jack stood a little taller, straightened his shoulders, and let a little bit of Kinetos slip into place.

It was time he became the hero he always wanted to be.

“Come on then,” Jack said. “We’ve got a whole bunch of bad guys to take down. We can’t do it from here.”

Daniel looked pleased. “You’re going to let me help you?”

“From behind your desk,” Jack said, glaring at him. “You write the exposé, I’ll handle the grunt work.”

“I can handle myself in a fight.”

“Daniel, I can’t do this if I think you’re not safe, I can’t. I already almost got you killed once. I-”

“Will have to learn to deal with it.” Daniel said, jaw set. “I’m not going into hiding just so you can feel better about yourself. I used to be a cop; I know how to protect myself if I need to. Besides, you think people won’t come after me once I expose this mess to the public? Reporters get death threats all the time, reporters from Shield News more than most. Knowing self-defense is a job requirement.”

Jack dropped his eyes and sighed. Daniel was going to be the death of him one day. The stress alone was gonna kill him. Daniel was just too stubborn for his own damn good.

“Fine,” Jack said. “Just- just promise me you won’t go running into danger. That you won’t go looking for it.”

“What, like you?”

“Daniel…”

Daniel sighed. “I’ve never gone looking for danger for the sake of looking. And I’ve always tried to have an escape plan when I know it might come looking for me. I’m not stupid, Jack.”

“I know you’re not. I know, I just,” he took a breath to try to bring his thoughts into focus, but all he could think about was the utter gut-wrenching terror he felt when he heard Daniel had been taken. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he whispered. “I can’t lose you. Not like that.”

“Then we’d better get all these assholes locked up behind bars where they belong, don’t you think?”

Jack smiled grimly at him, then pulled up his cowl. Daniel was right. The faster they put Chadwick and Frost and whoever was working with them in jail, the faster Daniel would be safe. His civilian job could go straight to hell.

“Let’s get to work, then,” Kinetos said. “We’ve got a city to save.”

**Author's Note:**

> Notes! I have a lot of them!
> 
> The pear trees mentioned in the opening scene are actually Callery Pears, which are an invasive species in much of the Eastern US and Canada that were widely planted in the 1950s because of their hardy, ornamental nature. They can be found all over New York City, and bloom white in early spring.
> 
> Vernon Masters, or the Master, as he oh so originally calls himself, works for the Mayor’s Office of Operations, which basically monitors and coordinates with all of the city’s agencies to make sure things are running smoothly. It sounds like a civilian extension of the work he does for the Council on the show, so I thought it was fitting.
> 
> Vernon’s phone number, Capital 2-5375, spells out Capital A Jerk, which I thought was also fitting. If you want to have fun making up old phone numbers, you can do so [here](http://www.ourwebhome.com/TENP/Recommended.html).
> 
> The Strategic Scientific School collapse was inspired by [this](http://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/new-london-school-explosion.htm) very real school disaster that took place in Texas in 1937. The opening scene of Crisscross is set during March as a sort of grim tribute.
> 
> Finow Street isn’t a real place in Manhattan, and certainly not in Hell’s Kitchen where all the streets are numbered. It was an easy way to give a nod toward the Battle of Finow from the show though, so I went with it.
> 
> Stuy Town (Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village) is a large private residential complex on the east side of Manhattan that was built in the 1940s. It was controversial for many reasons, including its use of eminent domain for private purposes and its famously racist tenant selection process. 
> 
> Thelonious Monk was a jazz pianist and composer best known for a distinctive style of music that was not conducive to dancing. But, in the early 50s when this story takes place, he was still playing stuff you could dance to, he just wasn't actually playing it in NYC nightclubs because he lost his Cabaret Card in 1951. I have him playing Zero Matter anyway because he's what I listened to when I needed to get myself in the zone for this story.
> 
> The Manhattan Municipal Building is a 40 story building built between 1907 and 1914 to accommodate increased demands for governmental space after the 1898 consolidation of New York City's five boroughs. It is one of the largest government buildings in the world.
> 
> The “main branch” of the NYPL is actually called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, but no one ever seems to call it that. The two lions, Patience and Fortitude, face out onto 5th Ave and got their names during the Depression, when Mayor LaGuardia thought those were qualities New Yorkers needed to face the troubles confronting them. The lions are so beloved they are now the trademarked mascots of the Library.
> 
> Hughie Mulligan was an Irish mobster and bookmaker operating out of Hell’s Kitchen in the 1950s.


End file.
